This mobile menu is quite working yet! Your editor’s doing his best. Check out the desktop site for links and our long-overdue site search function.

Every week, The Commons mails newspapers to libraries and schools throughout Windham County, and beyond. Of course we do! Part of our mission is make sure that honest, award winning reporting is available to all, regardless of ability to pay.

Now you can help further our mission. Only $75 guarantees a library or school delivery of The Commons for a full year. Join our Sponsor-a-Library program today! Click here (and select “Sponsor a Library” when asked “Apply My Donation To.”)

Let’s talk advertising

We’d love to help you with your ads! Please let us know a little bit about your advertising and your needs, and one of our team will be in touch promptly. You can also call Jen at 802-246-6397 Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

Regular ad features

Help Wanted

Real Estate

Nuts ’n’ Bolts (home improvement)

Public Notices (Legal Ads)

Front Page Box

Section Cover Strip Ads

CLOSE

More than a newspaper

The Commons is the public face of a larger nonprofit organization, Vermont Independent Media, Inc.

We came to life from the ground up in 2004, as members of the community became increasingly concerned about the consequences of absent corporate ownership of the daily newspaper in town and the need for local people to have access to the skills to create their own grassroots media.

VIM came to life lovingly and carefully thanks to indefatigable volunteers. The first public programs of the Media Mentoring Project began in 2005, and the first issue of The Commons was published in 2006. The newspaper was published monthly until 2010, when we began a weekly schedule. We are published on Wednesdays 51 times a year.

Our mission

Recognizing that a vigorous exchange of ideas and information allows democracy to function and is the lifeblood of a community, Vermont Independent Media:

• creates a forum for community participation,

• promotes local independent journalism,

• fosters civic engagement by building media skills

through publication of The Commons and commonsnews.org, and through the Media Mentoring Project.

Nonprofit IRS filings

By law, every 501(c)3 nonprofit organization must make its IRS filings available to the public. Here are ours.

Office hours

We attempt to keep our small newsroom open during the day on weekdays. But we are sometimes out covering the news, many of us are part-time, and we keep odd hours. We welcome your visit, but please make an appointment so you don't make a special trip.

Directions to the office

We're at 139 Main St., Brattleboro, Vermont (the Hooker-Dunham Building).

Search The Commons from 2010 to present

The Arts

The echoes of resistance and betrayal

Guilford Center Stage opens third season with ‘Our Enemy's Cup’ by local playwright Michael Nethercott

The Broad Brook Grange’s historic Charles W. Henry hand-painted scenic curtains go up on Our Enemy’s Cup on May 5 and 6, at 7:30 p.m. The Sunday matinée is at 2 p.m. To purchase tickets, or for more information, visit Brown Paper Tickets (www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2792718) and search for Guilford Center Stage. People can also email the theater company at inscapevt@myfairpoint.net.

By Olga Peters/The Commons

GUILFORD—Award-winning writer Michael Nethercott is thoughtful amid the buzz and rush of The Works Bakery Cafe in Brattleboro.

“In a lot of my writing, I’m drawn to history,” he said. “Maybe because history is frozen in amber, it’s very easy to observe and understand.”

The season officially opened in April with a square dance. The dance, with The Falltown String Band, from Bernardston, Mass., and with Bob Livingston, caller, from Middletown, Conn., served as a fundraiser for the organization.

Nethercott will also direct Our Enemy’s Cup, which grew from a one-act play. May 5 will be the premiere of the two-act version.

He is a common sight at The Works, typing on his laptop and occasionally watching the people passing the cafe’s large, plate glass windows.

Speaking again on his love for history, Nethercott said, “Even if [events] have loud echoes, they’re sometimes easier to absorb and perceive.”

A community under pressure

Last year, the Guilford Center Stage showcased two of his one-act plays. The first, Nocturne Titanica, is a mythical retelling — in verse — of the sinking of the Titanic. The Lace Jury followed California’s first all-female jury in 1911, picked for a obscenity case against A.A. King, the editor of the Watts News

Our Enemy’s Cup tackles a possible betrayal within a small French community during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Members of the local resistance movement believe a fellow community member has compromised the movement.

“These are folks who have seen each other’s faces for years and years, but now they’re seeing each other in different ways,” he said. “A number of them belong to the resistance. Someone may have betrayed other members.”

Nethercott describes the characters as, “ordinary people in unordinary times — rising to the occasion ... or falling.”

The close-knit community must come to terms with this suspected betrayal, Nethercott said. Their judgment will have consequences.

Before the war, Nethercott said, the French community maintained personal relationships, trusts, and affections. These people knew each other. There’s the local school teacher, a tavern owner, the doctor who delivered most of the town’s children.

But once caught under the shadow of the Nazis and balancing above the underground of the French Resistance, these once-friends see each other in a new light.

Nethercott said the play asks questions about how communities come back from horrible events and how they hold each other accountable.

“And,” Nethercott said, “Can you betray the betrayer?”

Across class lines

According to Nethercott, the French Resistance developed as an underground organization that recruited men and women from all walks of life, social classes, and education levels.

“Maybe in other parts of their lives they never would have been so bold,” he said. But in the “frenzied” environment of World War II, resistance members brought their skills to the movement.

Our Enemy’s Cup started as an award-winning one-act play. Nethercott said after receiving one award, he heard feedback from viewers that the play merited becoming a full-length two-act. He took the feedback to heart and fleshed out characters only alluded to in the one-act.

According to Nethercott’s website, Our Enemy’s Cupreceived the Vermont Playwrights Award, along with awards from the Claude Competition and the Nor’easter Playwrights Competition.

Knowing good actors get snatched up early by the local summer theater scene, Nethercott said he pre-cast his play as soon as the Guilford Center Stage producers asked him to participate in the third season.

Some of the actors have worked with Nethercott before. He called the collaboration a “good marriage,” and the most enjoyable part of the production. He credits the cast with bringing the play to life, and said it made him happy to witness the actors bring a fresh perspective to the characters.

Like what we do? Help us keep doing it!

We rely on the donations and financial support of our readers to help make The Commons available to all. Please join us today.

Editor’s note: Our terms of service require you to use your real names. We will remove anonymous or pseudonymous comments that come to our attention. We rely on our readers’ personal integrity to stand behind what they say; please do not write anything to someone that you wouldn’t say to his or her face without your needing to wear a ski mask while saying it. Thanks for doing your part to make your responses forceful, thoughtful, provocative, and civil. We also consider your comments for the letters column in the print newspaper.